Poker food for thought

Since I just made the final table of a pot-limit Omaha tournament on PokerStars, I thought I'd pose a theory question to you junkies out there. By the way, who's the boorish American hold 'em player now? Not this EuroRounder.

Blinds are 1000/2000 and you are in the big blind with Qs-8s-1oh-5h and the short stack on the table goes all in for 7000 chips. You have about 30,000 chips at the time which is above average, but not too much above average and you are near the money bubble? What do you do?



I ended up calling here, and here is why. My hand is mediocre, but I'm getting decent odds to call. After the short stack puts in 7000, the pot size is 10,000. It is now 5,000 to me to call to win 10,000; in other words, I'm getting 2:1 on my money. In order for this to be a mathematically correct play, I only have to be better than a 33% favorite to win the hand. My opponent ended up turning over Ac-Ah-2s-2d, which is actually a fairly strong Omaha hand (almost like hold 'em, bare aces are a favorite over any other hand preflop, though usually not by much. Also, when holding two pair in your hand, you are 4 to 1 to flop a set [three of a kind]). Still, even with that strong of a holding from my opponent I was only a 44_to_56 underdog. Turns out that even up against the strongest hand in Omaha (AAKK double suited, provided it's not sharing my suits) I'm only a 37_to_63 underdog. That my friends, is what we call a +EV move (positive expected value). Ironically, these are mistakes that people make all the time in tournaments. Later in the same tournament, the short stack moved in pre-flop again.... this time the big blind was getting something ridiculous like 5 t0 1 to call AND HE/SHE FOLDED! Not only can I not imagine a hand that is less than 16% to win in Omaha, but they let the short stack double through. Tsk tsk.

Sure, I went on to lose the hand.... but that doesn't matter because it was the right decision.